Cairo 2011 = Tehran 1979?

I eagerly await my TAC colleague Daniel Larison’s thoughts on the Egyptian mob’s overrunning of the Israeli embassy in Cairo this weekend. In my comboxes, some readers seem to have taken the line that Israel more or less deserves it. I don’t agree, and would invite those who think this to consider what it means for a sovereign government to allow a violent street mob to take over the embassy of another government. Whatever you think of the nation so violated, for this to happen is a stunning failure of a nation’s basic responsibilities to the international community. It is a sign that barbarism has eclipsed civilization, and we have to hope that it’s only a one-off thing in post-revolutionary Egypt.

This weekend, I read part of a lengthy dialogue published in the NYTimes Magazine among liberal foreign policy intellectuals, who were asked to rethink their own and the nation’s response to 9/11. My friend David Rieff writes that “if we are talking about the Arab Spring, I advise caution. It may well be that the Muslim Brotherhood is the principal beneficiary of Tahrir Square, not the democrats.”

True. The sacking of the Israeli Embassy is a terrible sign for Egypt, for the Arab Spring, and for the world, given that it is a signal that Egypt is headed toward a future driven by Islamist passions. It is especially worrying for Egypt’s Christian population, which has long been at the mercy of Islamist attacks. It is not necessary to approve of the government of Israel’s policies to recognize this development for what it is. We certainly ought to understand by now that not every democratic revolution is a good one.

UPDATE: A report in the Telegraph says the head of Egypt’s military kept Washington, Egypt’$ most generous ally, at bay while the mob did its dirty work on the Israeli embassy. Excerpt:

With six Israeli security guards fending off an angry mob rampaging through the mission, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, tried for two hours to get hold of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s de facto head of state, to demand an immediate rescue operation.

Aides told Mr Panetta that the general could not be found, Israeli officials were quoted as saying. The response prompted fury in Washington, and threats of US retribution. Field Marshal Tantawi’s mysterious disappearance intensified speculation that Egypt’s generals had deliberately failed to protect the embassy for political gain.

The armed forces, which are running Egypt until a civilian government is elected at the end of the year, are thought to be desperate to retain the political influence and financial privileges they enjoyed under President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by protests in February.

Officials in Israel, as well as a number of political activists in Cairo, have claimed that Field Marshal Tantawi turned down an opportunity to rein in the violence at the embassy in order to prove that, without a strong army, Egypt would descend into violence and anarchy.

UPDATE.2: I haven’t turned the comments on this post off, at least not on purpose. I’m surprised to see that they have been. I’m still trying to figure out the software; am trying to figure out how to free up the comments. No conspiracy theorizing, please!

UPDATE.3: OK, we figured out how to turn the comments back on. It’s true that I won’t post anything that I find to be anti-Semitic, or that trafficks in anti-Semitic tropes. I don’t, of course, find criticizing the government of Israel and its policies anti-Semitic. But I’m going to be careful about the kind of thing I allow to be posted. Please be responsible.

UPDATE.4:Daniel has a post up about the issue. He believes that the attack was outrageous, and that the Egyptian military probably allowed it to happen to play to popular Jew hatred for the sake of cementing its own power.

“In the end, most of the ultras’ violent energy got focused on the Israeli Embassy yesterday. Which seems pretty convenient for the authorities…”

So unless The Arabist writers are covering for the Muslim Brotherhood (they’re not) the rioters were Ultras (nationalistic anti-police football fans) rather than Islamists, almost encouraged by a low police presence. That sounds plausible.

I don’t find the attack on the embassy that surprising (I’m interested that it’s viewed as scandalous by many Cairenes), and certainly don’t buy it as symptomatic of an upsurge in anti-semitism in Egypt. For one thing, it’s more reminiscent of the (nationalist) burning down of the British Embassy in Dublin post Bloody Sunday, than, say, the (Islamist) burning down of the US Embassy in Islamabad in 1979. For another, anti-Semitism has been rife in Egypt for years.

Mubarak’s state TV (and other similar governments) pumped out anti-Semitic propaganda by the bucketload, including a 41 part flagship series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (!) Their deliberate propagation of anti-Semitism was an attempt to be seen as anti-Israel, while continuing to receive US aid for doing nothing (ie not fighting with Israel). Channels which are freer of state intervention (such as Al Jazeera) tend to be much less interested in pursuing anti-Semitic themes. That’s a hope for the future.

You wrote in an update: “the Egyptian military probably allowed it to happen to play to popular Jew hatred for the sake of cementing its own power”: so in other words the regime continues to play the game it has played for decades.

Egyptians are on the whole charming and kindly people. They also often believe utterly nonsensical anti-Semitic tales fed to them daily. It can be hard to accept how both can be true at the same time, but perhaps not that hard for someone who grew up in the South – and there are equivalent situations worldwide. (In contrast again, it has been commonplace for Israelis to visit and live in Cairo and openly speak Hebrew for many years, so the reality is even more complex than it first appears).

But to see the effect of this long history of anti-US, anti-Israel propaganda by the Egyptian State, even while it accepts US aid, you can look at the Arab Attitudes survey. Egypt usually comes in dead last in opinion of the US (5% currently have a favourable opinion – five percent!).

The Mubarak regime also cultivated the Muslim Brotherhood for years as the only viable opposition, simply to scare the US, as a further guarantee of US support (it worked). So all of this has been brewing for some time, and all funded by your tax dollars at work.

I understand your broader point that the Arab Spring is not something to be celebrated necessarily, but it was unavoidable. And I don’t agree that anti-Semitism is getting worse in the population because it has already been stoked for so long by Mubarak. It could get better over the long term if the Egyptians get an administration more interested in government than distraction (the fond hope of electorates everywhere).

What would a Muslim Brotherhood led government be like? I don’t know. We may find out, we may not, we have little leverage. I do know Egypt can’t go to war against Israel in any case because they can’t afford it (end of tourist trade) and they would lose (poorly maintained military). I’m not sure it would be in their interest to start persecuting the Copts (indeed Jews have noticeably been treated better in Islamic Iran than in nationalistic Arab countries, one of the brighter spots of the odious regime there, rather like Saddam’s protection of Christians). Those who (quite understandably) fear for the future of Arab Christian communities should firstly recognise the disastrous effects of our misadventures in Iraq.

To begin at the most general, anyone who thinks there is a pat little summary for where Egypt, or the Arab world, is going, is a fool. That includes anyone who says “Hallelujah! Democracy Peace and Brotherhood has arrived.” That also includes anyone who says “Horrors! Any day now the Muslim Brotherhood will take over, establish a Caliphate, and invite al Qaeda to move its headquarters to Thebes!”

Egypt is having a revolution, so far, a relatively peaceful one as revolutions go. There is a modest power vacuum, and the reason it isn’t any bigger is that the army is still intact and running things. This has positive and negative qualities. It means nobody else can run into the vacuum with a well-disciplined armed force, a la Taliban, and make themselves masters of the unarmed protests. It also means a good deal of what the people revolted against remains very much in place.

Aside from the army, there are many political currents and would-be political masters of the situation. It’s going to be an unsettled situation for some time. That’s par for the course. It took the Thirteen Colonies several years after winning independence to settle on a Constitution, and the first two years they were more than likely to spin apart or collapse in chaos.

Daniel may be right. It is one of the things that happens in a confused situation when people are jockeying for power. Or, the entire affair may have been the outburst of people tired of the army sitting in place doing very little, or, it may have been the actions of one faction of the Muslim Brotherhood trying out its muscles. Whatever it was, it is not the sum total of What Is Happening In Egypt. Nobody in Egypt is willing to go back to the status quo ante. So, anyone who wants to emphasize shock and horror, or even a smug “I told you so,” should have something to offer about, what would be better, really, something feasible given the demography of Egypt, and, as non-Egyptians, what, if anything, should we be doing about it?

Frankly, I don’t think there is much outsiders can or should do. If the USA started overtly backing any political tendency in the situation, it would do that tendency more harm than good. For better or worse, the Egyptians are going to sort it out for themselves. An occasional kind and encouraging word might keep us in better stead than standing on the sidelines shouting doom and gloom. If there are modest things we can do to help the Egyptians develop a more productive economy, it would be wise for us to do so, although again, it is mostly up to them.

In regards to the Copts, it was not all that long ago that there were counter-demonstrations in their favor, and that a significant numbers of Muslims, including some locally prominent people, showed up at Christian (Coptic) churches on Christmas as a show of solidarity (and frankly, to act as human shields) after a terror attack on the Copts. That, at least, is heartening, even if it seems like old news now.

There are, I think, two things at work in Egypt: religious extremism and Egyptian nationalism. The former, I believe, has the upper hand for now: it’s what toppled Mubarrek and turned out to protect the Copts (who are an ancient part of Egypt after all). Of couse both Egyptian nationalism and Islamism can go hand-in-hand when it comes to hostility to Israel.
However, when the day is done I believe theat Egypt is better off without Mubarrek. One cannot support tyranny forever after all. And revolutions are never without excess. Even our own resulted in many British loyalists being badly abused, even killed, and their property stolen from them.